I read a factoid somewhere once - at least, I think I did - which said that depression is almost unknown in the third world; that when one has to struggle to survive on a daily basis, one didn't have time to get depressed; that depression required time for introspection. Instinctively, this seems approximately right to me, although I can't reconcile it with how I feel at the moment. A horrid constellation of events has left me with far too much to do in far too little time, and it's depressing the hell out of me.
Strangely, I don't
mind too much being mildly depressed from time to time; nor do I seek too much sympathy for it. I decided a long time ago that my periods of depression were, in some strange way, productive, connected to my creativity, and that I didn't desire to have them treated. And I do take some pleasure in occasional self-indulgent wallowing. But being down and having too much stuff to do is no fun at all. I'm at work, now, and trying to get myself up to do some actual work.
As often happens, when things aren't going entirely your way, the world has been conspiring against me to make things harder than they need be. There are two incidents worth mentioning. The first is this: yesterday, during one of the hardest days I've had in a while, I got viciously yelled at by a mean nun. Now those of you who know me are no doubt thinking, "Jeez, Nicholas, your ability to piss people off is legendary, but I never thought you'd stoop this low. What attrocity did you commit to get yelled at by a nun?" But, ladies and gentleman of the jury, I
did nothing wrong. I was at a former convent, now a bed and breakfast, and was engaged in the horribly difficult and physically stressful job of trying to carry massive steel bookshelves down stairs. In the midst of this, the mean nun came and screamed at us because we were making too much noise. We apologised profusely. She was distinctly uncharitable, and continued to tell us off as if we were small children.
Then, this morning, I had a run-in with The Fire Alarms That Cry Wolf on a Regular Basis. Basically, in the continuing tradition of bug infestations in my apartment, I've had, for the past few weeks, a terrible problem with a strange species of fruit fly. It's not just me - they're all over Sydney, I'm seeing them everywhere. In fact, I've developed something of a hunter's eye for this particular critter, as for the past week or two I have been going on search and destroy missions throughout my apartment, armed with fly spray, zapping them on an individual basis - more general efforts to spray them having failed. And I've been going through a can of spray every couple of days, which I don't like. The pesticide people insist their spray is safe, but I don't believe them - does anybody? That's what they said about DDT.
So I decided to bomb them, in the hope that this would clear them out. I set everything up before I left, got the bombs a-bombin', and left the apartment for work. Immediately, the fire alarms tripped. I opened the door, went back inside, acquiring a fine coating of my old friend, the "probable mutagen" fenoxycarb, and opened the doors to the balcony. Then I went downstairs to tell the building managers that there was no problem.
And who did I encounter but the nun's twin brother, masquerading as the building manager of our apartment. "You should have phoned us," he said. I pointed out that I'd come down immediately to tell them, and I couldn't exactly phone from my apartment, which was full of fenoxycarb. "No, no," he said. "BEFORE you let the bug spray off. Now you'll get a fine for a false alarm."
I looked at him incredulously, then pointed out a few things. Not all these things, I'm sure, and certainly not this coherently, but I hope and believe I mentioned at least a few. That I had lived in the apartment building for five years, and never once had I seen any notice informing residents to inform building management before using an insect bomb. That I'd used them before without incident. That it was a common household product that I'd used in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions. That The Fire Alarms That Cry Wolf On a Regular Basis, cry wolf on a regular basis. That I'd immediately notified them of the problem. And that I'd talked to his sister yesterday, and he resembled her.
I need a shower.
Gem has tagged me, then dared and double-dared me to do it. I don't wanna. Hate memes, and particularly hate revealing my insecurities in public. But I've been tagged, and apparently the universe will explode if I don't do it, so... It seems that this blog is increasingly Livejournalifying, anyway, what with the small humdrum observations, and the lists of things, and the like...
Actually I'm not sure I really understand - am I supposed to reveal strange habits, or things I don't like about myself? Most of my self-hatred isn't directed at unusual habits, but I'll do my best.
Instructions:
1. Reveal six weird facts/things/habits about yourself and then tag six people.
2. Leave a “You’re Tagged!” comment to let the people you have tagged know they have to reveal six things (or the entire blogosphere will explode and it will be their fault).
3. Leave me a comment letting me know that you have completed your mission (if you have chosen to accept it!)
1. About a third of the milk bottles I buy are thrown out uncompleted because I forgot to put them back in the fridge.
2. Laziness could fill the entire list, but for somebody who has said, often and loudly, that they were put on the earth to be a writer, I sure spend a lot of time not-writing.
3. I am phone-phobic and will go to almost any length to avoid calling people I don't know, particularly if call centres are involved.
4. I like reading transcriptions of cockpit voice recorders of crashed planes.
5. I like to show off my typing speed, and enjoy weirding out customers by continuing to type while I talk to them.
6. For about eight years, the only meat I would eat was beef.
Tags: I won't do six, but I will tag the two bloggers I know who are least likely to enjoy revealing embarrassing habits in public:
Tim and
Arrietty - assuming she isn't dead in a ditch, somewhere in Germany.
I pity the parent to whom the subtitle of this book applies:
What To Do About Your Brain-Injured Child: Or Your Brain Damaged, Mentally Retarded, Metally Deficient, Cerebral Palsied, Spastic, Flaccid, Rigid, Epileptic, Autistic, Athertoid, Hyperactive Child.
And the kid, too. Jeez. Talk about unfortunate. I think an "or" somewhere towards the end of that list would have been helpful.
A book for yo Momma. Heh heh.
I never do memes, but this is kind of fun.
Meme instructions: Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won't, place an asterisk after the ones on your book shelf, and place (parentheses) around the ones you've never even heard of. (Bookseller addendum - only my personal shelves count).
The Da Vinci Code - Dan BrownThe Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger*
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas AdamsThe Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald*
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (no copy as of two weeks ago - sold it, as I didn't think I'd want to read it again before I could find another copy...)
(The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger) I have no idea what this is.
His Dark Materials - Philip PullmanHarry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. RowlingLife of Pi - Yann Martel*
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George OrwellCatch-22 - Joseph Heller Tried it several times, couldn't get into it.
The Hobbit - J. R. R. TolkienThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon*
Lord of the Flies - William GoldingPride and Prejudice - Jane Austen1984 - George OrwellHarry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling Why two Rowlings? Just to make it absolutely clear:
The first three pages of the first Harry Potter novel Heh heh. I fucking hated it. Sorry to her legions of fans, but there it is.
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia MarquezMemoirs of a Geisha - Arthur GoldenThe Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini But probably not.
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold Again, but probably not, unless I was desperate.
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut* Own a copy, always meant to give it a decent shot...
The Secret History - Donna Tartt*
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte*
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis*
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides*
(Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell)
Jane Eyre - Charlotte BronteAtonement - Ian McEwan*
(The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon) Some of these titles make me feel very ignorant, professionally speaking.
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest HemingwayThe Handmaid's Tale - Margaret AtwoodThe Bell Jar - Sylvia PlathDune - Frank Herbert
Time passes; things change. These are cliches which record a deeper truth. I am in love with the change of the seasons. It is Autumn, now, suddenly: my favourite season, but a brief season. Summer lasts forever, but Autumn fades to winter so quickly. I got my heater out tonight. I also cleaned my apartment this week, and it is finally looking nice. Homey, a friend said.
It would seem my deal has finally, irrevocably, fallen through. Which means I can now write about it. Basically the last six months have been spent in negotiation with a dentist who was trying to buy the building my shop is in; negotiating for us to surrender our lease, in exchange for about twenty thousand dollars. At first I was appalled at somebody trying to take from me a thing which has become part of my identity; I held out until the money became so serious that I had to seriously consider it. Over time I began to see benefits in not having a shop - the internet was by then doing very well for us, and I was not giving up being a bookseller, just giving up being a bricks-and-mortar store. I would still have a solid business, and I would have the freedom and time to do other things - to write again, to go on a trip, to adjust my workload almost at will to balance my need for money with my need for time.
And it was all set; it was ready to go ahead. Then the building owners, who were already being overpayed, demanded more money from the dentist, and he quite reasonably refused their demands. Six months of thought and planning and adjustment became a pointless waste of time.
But it's OK, I think. The money would have been nice, but I shall now see out my lease, which has about a year to run, and it should be a productive year. There's a new staff member, Courtney, and Tahlia, who has been with the shop pretty much since I started, is leaving to travel through Europe. She will be missed in many ways. As a result of this I'm only working officially one day a week at the moment, and remarkably the business seems able to support three people living out of home quite well. And I have time again - a lot of which goes into handling larger matters associated with the business, but a certain amount of which is actually free time, time in which I can (or should be able to) write, and think. And that's very nice. I can't complain too much - I haven't lost anything, and somebody lucky enough to be doing something they actually enjoy, and doing it succesfully enough to employ others to handle the mundane things, cannot shake their fist too violently at the gods of fate. Just the same, the owners of my building are definately off my Christmas card list.
So it's a time of change. I have a month, until Tahlia goes, to take care of all the things that have been put off, things I couldn't do until I knew what was happening. And hopefully I can still arrange things so I have some time this year. My creative side has been allowed to grow too dormant.
I'm also turning thirty very soon. And that is something I can't help thinking about. Of course it is stupid to allow yourself to be so affected by the arbitrary collusion of a decimal counting system and the earth's circuit of the sun - but we all do it, and I guess that there will be more posts on this point over the next couple of months.
It
is nice to have this buyout thing off my back, though, even if it isn't the outcome I'd come to hope for. But the complete uncertainty associated with it had grown to such a point that it was crippling everything I did. It is one of the reasons I haven't written many blog entries lately, and that's one of the less important symptoms. I don't deal well with uncertainty, particularly the type of uncertainty where the final outcome is completely independent of any action I might take. And tonight I feel nice. I'm typing this in my clean, homey apartment, and I'm surrounded by walls of books, and I'm drinking red wine, listening to Edith Frost's first album. I might be becoming calmer as I get older. God help me, my maturity-level at this point is probably that of a person in their twenties. Time to advance to a new decade, then - I'd hate to catch up with myself.
